It's not at all certain that Comet ISON will turn out to be the "comet of the century," as hoped, but a couple of things are certain: It's not an alien spaceship, and it hasn't split up into three pieces.

Those were apparently questions on the minds of some folks last month, thanks to a flurry of videos and blog postings based on imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope's archives. The hoohah got hot enough to merit an official response, posted to the Space Telescope Science Institute's archive website and its ISON Blog.